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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Training Update April 21, 2012

A solid week of training. Normal ups and downs but I am nearly in PR territory on the press and bench press and hit 315 for a new personal record on the deadlift. Squats are coming right along as well.

Monday

Squat 255 3x5

Press 135 3x5
Got the big wheels on today (45lb plates).

Deadlift 310 4/1

Had to take a quick 10 second breather and reset my grip on the last one so I call it a set of 4 and a single.

Chins 4/3/3

Thursday

Squat 260 5/4.5/5

I started the second set with a half squat (things didn't feel right on the decent so I came back up). Then I nailed down 4 more reps and failed on the fifth. Third set was good but the last two reps were grinders.

Bench Press 220 4
I failed on the 5th rep. I knew I was out of time so I went on

Chins 4/3/3

Saturday

Squat 265 3x5
I was high on 2 of the last 5 reps. I came out of the bottom much better this time.

Press 140 3x5

Deadlift 315 1x5

The first rep went up alright but the second one slipped after rising only an inch or two. I quickly switched from the hook grip to the mixed grip and the next 4 reps went up without a hitch.

It was pretty awesome to have 3 wheels on each side of the bar.

My Thursday session was at the recreation building, which is the best place to workout at the University of Iowa. Few people show up there and the ones that do are often serious trainees or collegiate level athletes. After my squat sets this man with highly bouldered quads and hips gave me a few pointers. Turns out he is some sort of coach for the track team. He was literally jumping out of deep squats with 225 pounds on his back. He was also cleaning and front squatting in between his plyometric squats. Its nice to run into real athletes. We chatted a bit and he said "I normally don't tell people how to work out but you seemed to know what you were doing so I thought I'd just point a few things out that might help you." I said "Don't worry about it I have had much less useful information thrown at me here. One time a guy told I was squatting too deep and that I should be half squatting to protect my knees." He had a confused look on his face then got down to a half squat position and replied "That doesn't make any sense there is a lot more shear stress in the half squat position." It was really good to hear that. I get sick of dealing with all the myths and misinformation associated with weight training. Glad to know our track team at least has someone who knows what they are doing.